Shadow
by Girl-no-13
Summary: A girl begins university, a new hero emerges to protect London.


Chapter 1

'So do you live on campus?'

'No, I've got a flat in Bow.'

'Oh cool, ' the girl sitting next to Aoife looked a little shocked, and much more interested. 'So what's it like?'

'Small, but at the top of the building, it's really cool.' Aoife conveniently forgot to mention the penthouse rooms above also belonged to her, with their convenient roof access and high end security system.

'Wow, I can't believe you have your own flat! Your parents must be loaded.'

Just then the teacher arrived and the lesson, their first at Queen Mary's, began. Aoife listened half heartedly to the usual boring stuff about what would be expected of them, inwardly planning the next area of London she wanted to familiarise herself with, glad that she hadn't had to go through the usual task of telling people about her parents just yet.

That evening a grey coated, hooded figure crept over the roofs of the Stratford Centre, looking for easy routes across the roofs, hiding places, hidden dangers and anything interesting. It was mostly hidden by the shadows as it nimbly dropped down into an ally and headed east, silent and purposeful.

That Friday, and Aoife was settling into university life. After a year travelling it seemed odd to hear so many British accents, but Queen Mary's, as well as being a very young university, was a very multicultural university, with lots of international students, Aoife found the American accents as comforting as the English ones.

It had only been a few days, so people were still having trouble with her name, she had very patiently explained 'ee-fa, sounds like the drug' more than once, and then having to explain that she was actually only quarter Irish confused people even more. Other than that the normally shy girl had found the other students friendly, and seemed especially popular with the other Classics students, after all, most of them were the same, shy, intelligent, hard working.

'Ok, that's all for today, have a good weekend', and then the lesson was over and the students were collecting their stuff, their first week completed.

'Aoife, do you want to come to come and get coffee with me and a few other people?' asked Sarah, the girl Aoife always seemed to end up sitting next to.

'Sure, that sounds good, thanks.'

'Give me your wallet and phone, quick.'

Paul Roberts looked up at the words and saw a hooded boy, next to him another, both held knives, half-shadowed faces brutal in the street light. Shocked into submission he began to fumble in his pockets, hands shaking, cold sweat soaked his back.

'I said be quick, hurry up, or I'll slit your throat.'

Then, out of the shadows of the houses came a figure, jumping from a balcony to land feet first on the first hooded boy, before Paul could react the dark figure was up, kicking the knife out of the hand of the other boy then punching him in the face in one easy move. He fell to the floor in a crumpled heap. The first boy tried to drag himself up and towards his knife, a swift kick to the head reduced him to another crumpled heap next to his friend.

'Are you ok?' asked the caped figure, in, Paul realised with disconcertion, a female voice, as she looped the two boys hands with plastic ties.

'Er, I think so, they... You... They had knives!'

'Call the police, CCTV cameras will have captured everything, you won't get in trouble. Go to your doctor too, it's likely you're in shock.'

Paul recovered some of his senses, 'You're a hero, like that Batman they have in Gotham.'

'Something like that.' Then the figure was gone, and Paul would always swear she literally vanished into the shadows at the side of the road.

Early morning, and the dark girl hauled herself up onto a rooftop, from it's fire escape, and let herself into the building that took up half the roof, first undergoing a retinal scan, a fingerprint check, and entering a code. She walked to the computer desk, lowering her hood and taking off her grey coat as she went, to reveal long hair, dark brown and very curly. Then off came the white mask, blank, with only eye holes cut in it, perfectly moulded to her face by nanotechnology, and underneath she was an averagely pretty girl in her late teens, with sharp green blue eyes.

Aoife cast the mask onto the nearby sofa, and sat in front of her desk, turning on the television as she did. Sky London news informed her that two men had been arrested for unlawful possession of weapons and intent to steal in East London, the police were currently looking for the vigilante who apprehended them, though a Mr Paul Roberts, who was threatened by the pair, was said to be 'very grateful' to his rescuer. Hearing this Aoife smiled, her first non reconnaissance night in London and it had gone very well.

She listened to the rest of the news as she checked her email and other communications. Everything was quiet so she tidied away her coat and mask, changed out of her costume into her pyjamas, and went down the secret ladder to her flat, where she crawled into bed, tired and satisfied.

Another Monday, and Aoife sat in the classroom discussing _Prometheus Bound_ and Greek tragedy in general, one of her favourite subjects that she would be studying that year. She ended up getting very heated on the subject of tragedy, agreeing with the teachers definition of Tragedy as needing to be staged, and so technically most uses of the word were wrong. She considered quoting a lyric from a Marilyn Manson song at that point, but decided not to, after all, she was supposed to be making a good impression, and goth music wasn't exactly academic.

After the lesson she again went to get coffee with Sarah, and also Damon, one of Sarah's friends she had met the previous week.

'My girlfriend Yasmin will be there today, I mentioned her last week,' said Sarah as they walked to the café from the Arts building.

'Yeah, I'm looking forward to meeting her.' Actually Aoife was a bit nervous, Yasmin was a post graduate student, quite a lot older than the others, and sounded really intelligent.

In the café Aoife found herself sitting opposite Yasmin, who in actual fact didn't look that much older, certainly not as much as she had been expecting, and was really beautiful, Asian, with shiny black hair and amazing eyes. Sitting next to the tall, boyish Sarah she looked incredibly feminine, and the two of them made a striking couple.

'So you do Classics too Aoife?' she asked.

'Yes, that's how I met Sarah, she's in a couple of my seminars.'

'I hope your enjoying it as much as Sarah is. Your first year should be your best at university, and you have the luck to not be surrounded by loads of geeky, unsocialised boys who care about their computers more than anything else.'

'Hey!' said Damon, who was sitting next to Aoife, 'my computer is only my second love.'

Aoife laughed at the sand replied 'And I do study Classics, I'm surrounded by geeky, unsocialised boys who love Latin more than anything else! So what do you study Yasmin?'

'Electronics, with elements of electronic engineering and computer science, so actually I do love my computer more than is healthy.

'Wow, that sounds very impressive!'

Late that evening Aoife got in from a very unsatisfactory patrol, obviously Monday nights had a tendency to be quite in East London, and without any transport until her bike arrived she didn't want to stray too far, she'd only have to walk back, or hazard public transport, which she wasn't too enthusiastic about, not in full costume. Instead she turned to the computer, listening in to police radio and practising the hacking techniques she'd been being taught over the phone and internet by the mysterious Oracle, who had discovered her.

That had been two and a half years ago, when she was sixteen and a half, and one moment she was a normal rich girl at private school, the next she had begun to blend with shadows at will, rendering herself invisible if the shadow was large enough. She had kept it a secret from everyone, but had practised at the weekend when she was home alone apart from the servants of her parents Mayfair townhouse. Just before her seventeenth birthday a blonde American woman, who she now knew to be Dinah Lance, had come to see her, explaining there had been reports of metahuman activity in the area, and talked to her about her potential. Aoife knew she was different, but that was the first time she really began to think of using her power for good, despite the warnings of how dangerous it was, especially as it she was so young, and so isolated. Still, she had finished her A levels, though she had begun to exercise and had taken up karate, until finally she was able to leave, using her dads money to finance a 'gap year' that was in fact a year of training, with all sorts of people.

Through Dinah Lance she had been in contact with Oracle, who gave her lessons in computing and security, Wildcat taught her the basics of boxing, Slam Bradly taught her evidence gathering and questioning techniques, when she met Beast Boy he flirted with her and she got beaten in fights by everyone she trained with, though when she was finally able to at least hold her own against Dinah and Robin she felt ready to strike out on her own. She regarded many of the people she had met as friends, but frequently found herself in arguments with them, as they tried to persuade her not to strike out on her own. In response to this she said a few things to Robin she regretted once she had been told about Spoiler, especially when Robin admitted she reminded him of her a little. She left America soon after that, to go home and get ready for university, feeling like a new person.

She was jerked out of her reverie by the computer telling her she had a new message, dutifully she opened it up, it was from Oracle, informing her there were signs of possible metahuman activity in London, something to do with electronics. If this was a person then they could be very dangerous, and if it wasn't a person it could easily be something more dangerous, Aoife read the information carefully, then reread it make sure she hadn't made any mistakes. The activity was concentrated in East and Central London and mainly involved things like disruption of traffic lights, unusual internet activity and tales of electrical appliances malfunctioning for no apparent reason. Many of these reports came from inside gay and lesbian bars, or close to them, so Oracle had attached a list of local known gay and lesbian people with information suggesting they had an unusual aptitude for electronics.

As she read those words Aoife knew one of the names she was going to find among the others on the list, and sure enough Yasmin Jameson was there, along with a picture of the girl she had been sitting with yesterday and an address in Bethnal Green.

'Wonderful', she muttered to herself, 'that's just what I need.' Sighing, she typed a reply to Oracle, thanking her and saying she'd get on it the next day.


End file.
